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Sushi Making with Alice Sushi Art!

Love sushi? Ever wanted to learn how to make it? If your answer to both is YES PLEASE then we’ve got just the person for you!

Alice is a lovely lady who runs Alice Sushi Art. She runs various classes teaching people how to make. We were fortunate enough to be able to spend an awesome day hanging out with her, learning to make all types of sushi.

Alice lived in Japan for two years teaching English. Whilst there, she immersed herself into the Japanese culture and fell in love with all things sushi. Alice had a great two years and loved that she was living a life doing what she enjoyed – teaching, and eating sushi.

So much, that when she came back to the UK she decided to combine the two and teach people how to make sushi! Now she’s branching out to teaching how to make bento boxes and origami too.

one of alice’s bento box creations

There’s a number of ways you can learn from Alice. You can attend one of her group classes, book a private class with a few friends, have a sushi making birthday party (she’s done a lot of these for kids) or even corporate events too! Whichever one you choose, Alice’s sushi class will definitely make the occasion extra special.

the set up we were greeted with when we arrived at Alice’s

In our opinion, Alice is the perfect person for holding these classes – she’s super creative and patient! Kitty was a novice at making sushi, but under the guidance of Alice, she was able to produce some pretty decent looking sushi!

Alice is also inspiring – she gives you the tools and knowledge, but gives you the freedom to create the final product. She prepared many different ingredients and toppings for us and let us play around with the different flavours in our sushi.

Here’s what Alice taught us to make:

Temari Sushi – this is a little ball of sushi and Alice told us that “te” (手) means hand and “mari” (まり) means ball. Alice made these look pretty simple to make, but we soon realised there was more to it than we thought!

All you need is a piece of cling film, and place your topping and sushi rice in the centre. Then grab all four corners of the cling film and twist it all together inside the palm of your hand. Twist and shape the sushi at the same time and you should end up with a little ball of sushi.

One of the temari we made was using salmon and to make it pretty, Alice tied a piece of chive around it. This wasn’t easy and you definitely need nimble fingers!

temari making – step 1 place fish in the centre of the cling filmtemari making – step 2 place an appropriate amount of sushi rice on top of the fishtemari making – step 3, roll up the cling filmtemari making – step 4, twist and shapetemari making – step 5, tie a piece of chive around it

Alice’s temari were perfectly round, ours were “good attempts”. But practice makes perfect, and with a few more tries, we managed to make them more presentable.

Frushi – this is Alice’s personal creation. Literally – fruit and sushi. The fruit replaces the fish or vegetable that is traditionally used for sushi. The rice is sweetened with coconut milk, vanilla essence and a little bit of sugar.

frushi making – sweet sushi rice, strawberries, mango and cocoa powderfrushi making, the results – can you tell who made which one?

There’s nothing like this anywhere, and it shows the creativity that Alice has! We used mango and strawberries, but other fruits like kiwi would also work just as good.

We made these into the temari shape too and they all looked so pretty!

our finished frushi

Vegetarian Maki – these are the more familiar-looking types of sushi. Maki (巻) means roll and Alice taught us how to roll the smaller sized ones. Alice prepared a variety of different types of vegetables for us to use for our filling and this really brought out our creativeness.

To roll the maki, you’ll need a sushi mat. Place your piece of nori (ノリ- seaweed) sheet on top then spread over sushi rice. Once you’ve made this base, you can then make a line in the middle using whatever filling you want. Alice made a simple tahini and lemon juice dressing, which added a nice nutty and zingy taste to the sushi.

Traditionally, maki rolls are to be cut into equal sizes. But we decided to be creative and played around with the shapes and sizes:

Lastly, Alice taught us how to make handrolls. Traditionally, these are made using nori sheets. But Alice being creative, showed us how to make them using soy wrappers.

These were probably the most difficult ones of the day. Ensuring you had the right amount of sushi rice and toppings inside was just the start. Next you had to carefully fold the sheet into the shape of a handroll, without dropping all the ingredients inside! As these soy wrappers don’t stick like a nori sheet would, we had to carefully secure it in place with a little toothpick. Alice provided us with some really cute ones so all was good 🙂

soy wrap handrolls

Another difficulty with the class was trying to hold back from eating all our creations! Alice had prepared some Japanese desserts for us, so with our sushi we could have a Japanese inspired afternoon tea. This is also one of the types of classes you can have with her.

When enjoying our afternoon tea, we realised that Alice’s talents wasn’t just at making sushi, it was also at making Japanese sweets and desserts! Her black sesame and cream dorayaki was super yummy and we just couldn’t get enough of it.

Overall, we both had a really good time with Alice. It was a really fun experience and we’d highly recommend her classes. Alice can tailor the class to your requirements and it can be suitable for all age groups (kid’s birthday parties are really popular with Alice). You can either visit her in Highgate for a class or she can come to your chosen venue. So the next time you’re wondering what to do for a special occasion with family, friends or even work, get in touch with Alice!

Alice also has an event coming up on Sunday 10th July 2016 with the tea master Don Mei – Introduction to sushi making and tea pairing. This is a 3 hour class where Alice will teach you the history of sushi and basic sushi making skills. Don will give you an introduction to pairing tea with the right foods. The event will be held at Chinalife in Camden, to get your tickets and for more information please check out: https://www.eventbrite.com

Sushi Making Class by Alice Sushi ArtReviewed by Yummy Jubbly on2016-07-01.Overall, we both had a really good time with Alice. It was a really fun experience and we'd highly recommend her classes. Alice can tailor the class to your requirements and it can be suitable for all age groups (kid's birthday parties are really popular with Alice). You can either visit her in Highgate for a class or she can come to your chosen venue. So the next time you're wondering what to do for a special occasion with family, friends or even work, get in touch with Alice! Rating: